On April 14, 1912, the Titanic hit an iceberg and later sank. Dean, her mother, and 2-year-old brother survived, but her father died with the many other third-class men who weren’t allowed on lifeboats.
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According to Dean, her father felt the ship collide with the iceberg, which might have saved his family’s lives.
“I think it was my father who saved us,” Dean said in 2002, according to the Los Angeles Times. “So many other people thought the Titanic would never sink, and they didn’t bother. My father didn’t take a chance.”
Dean, her mother, and brother were put on lifeboat 13, as reported by BBC News.
The survivors on lifeboats were later picked up by the RMS Carpathia and taken to New York City. But Dean’s father was among the more than 1,500 people who died in the tragedy.
Dean said she believed it was true that White Star Lines employees had prevented third-class passengers from going above deck and potentially escaping the sinking ship, The New York Times reported.
“It couldn’t happen nowadays, and it’s so wrong, so unjust. What do they say? ‘Judy O’Grady and the colonel’s lady are sisters under the skin.’ That’s the way it should have been that night, but it wasn’t,” she said.